Every feeling of animosity, of dislike, which Henry Fowler might have cherished, melted before the pitiful sight. It was through a mist of tears, which came near to falling, that he gazed down on the child's white face.
It was quite composed and the eyes half shut. A certain drawn look about the mouth, and the added placidity and beauty of death gave to it a likeness to Elsa which had not seemed to exist in life. It was somewhat horrible to contemplate. In her moments of dumb obstinacy Henry had seen her look so.
He turned away his face for a moment, looking out over the busy, tossing, sunlit sea, where the shadows of the clouds chased each other in soft blurs of shadow, with green and russet shoals between.
The fresh quick air swept over the chalk, laden with brine. A warm odor of thyme was in its breath, and there lay Godfrey, with stiff limbs and still heart, in a silence only broken by his aunt's sobs, and the whistling of the wind among the rocks.
"How do you know that death was caused by a blow?" asked Mr. Percivale of the sailors, at length.
Bergman explained, in his German accents, that they had made an examination of the body to see if it could be identified.
"It is not lying now as we found it, sir. It was bent together—we straightened the limbs. In pulling down the shirt to see if there was a name marked on it, we discovered a livid bruise."
Mr. Percivale knelt down by the dead boy, and, passing an arm gently beneath him, raised the lifeless head till it lay against his shoulder, and exposed the bruise in question.
Mrs. Orton, who had been silent till now, uttered an inarticulate cry of rage:
"Look there!" she gasped.